God Speaks Your Language

Psalm 99
Praise to God for His Holiness
The Lord is king; let the peoples tremble!
    He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!
The Lord is great in Zion;
    he is exalted over all the peoples.
Let them praise your great and awesome name.
    Holy is he!
Mighty King, lover of justice,
    you have established equity;
you have executed justice
    and righteousness in Jacob.
Extol the Lord our God;
    worship at his footstool.
    Holy is he!

Moses and Aaron were among his priests,
    Samuel also was among those who called on his name.
    They cried to the Lord, and he answered them.
He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud;
    they kept his decrees,
    and the statutes that he gave them.

O Lord our God, you answered them;
    you were a forgiving God to them,
    but an avenger of their wrongdoings.
Extol the Lord our God,
    and worship at his holy mountain;
    for the Lord our God is holy.

A friend of mine is a much more charismatic variety of Christian than I am. She grew up Pentecostal and her spiritual formation tended to emphasize the work of the Holy Spirit both in worship and in day to day communion with God. 

The other day we were catching up and she asked me, "Do you believe in spiritual warfare?" 

The question caught me off guard and I asked her to elaborate what she was thinking about.

She described to me an extremely vivid dream she had a week prior and how meaningfully it touched on a relationship with a close friend of hers, for whom she had been fervently praying. Hearing her recount the dream and how it shook her, it became quite obvious that the tug of war going on inside her heart and mind, which she called "spiritual warfare" was very much real insofar as it was dominating her headspace and affecting her mood and behavior. I told her as much. 

Last night I had a dream about my seminary classmates and the last episode of Vampire Diaries, quite devoid of any spiritual meaning from all I can discern. To my knowledge I've never really had God speak to me in a dream or in a vision like my friend. God appeared to the Israelites in many forms, including a pillar of clouds, a talking donkey, and various supernatural occurrences. I've never experienced God like that either. I've heard wild stories from my time as a missionary from South American friends who experienced miraculous things. I've never seen a miracle either. It's enough to make me feel like a second rate Christian if I compare my relationship with God to others like this. 

I have found God in nature, in my journal, in critical commentaries of scripture, and in the testimonies of others. It's not as if I've never heard God speak. But to be honest, if God did speak to me in a cloud or a dream my over-analyzing mind would likely find some way to explain away God's message as meaningless or coincidental. 

I think what it comes down to is this: if you are wondering if God is speaking to you in a particular way, the answer is probably yes. I don't mean this in a spiritualized "perception is reality" postmodern sense. Instead what I mean is that God speaks your language and teaches you in ways that you notice and find meaningful. 

Our faith language is often largely formed by your upbringing and the influence of your culture, but a lot of it may also connect to your personality, whether you are a thinker or a feeler, intuitive or analytical. Think about this today: What are the ways that you see and experience God's voice? Is God using something in your life right now to teach you? 

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Kelsey Vincent, Pastor for Youth and Families, First Baptist Decatur